Sarah Quinn’s subject choice – the self-help industry – taps the zeitgeist. Three monologues (written by DeAnne Smith, Sarah Quinn and Samuel Booth) form the basis of Other People’s Problems.
This is a well-travelled show and it feels like it. Quinn is a confident, warm performer who has taken this show around Australia and OS. All the gags are nailed and she coaxes a suspicious audience into a happy place. She isn’t helped by the dead space of the Seymour Centre – traditionally a sarcophagus for comics.
Quinn is at her best with her own material. In Good Authority, she finds a deeper comic range and a genuinely funny persona in the grating teenage agony aunt of Casey, who authoritatively though crudely, advises vulnerable young people online.
Although the ending weakens the structure of the piece, Quinn’s satire illuminates a truism about online connections and raises the question of who is exploiting who. The best hope is that Quinn will continue developing this kind of intelligent work, find a skilled dramaturg/director and the ABC will give her a spot to develop sketch humour on TV.
2011 Sydney Comedy Festival
Other People's Problems
Sarah Quinn
Venue: Downstairs Theatre | Seymour Centre
Dates: 27-30 April & 4-7 May, 2011
Times: 7.30pm
Duration: 60 mins
Tickets: $26 – $22
Bookings: (02) 9351 7940
Sydney Reviews
Other People’s Problems | Sarah Quinn
- Details
- jane barton
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